The Milky Way

1969 Director Luis Buñuel

This is the first of what Luis Bunuel later proclaimed a trilogy about "the search for truth". The Milky Way (La Voie Lactee) daringly deconstructs contemporary and traditional views on Catholicism with ribald, rambunctious surreality.

Two vagabonds are making their way from Paris to Spain on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of Saint James are believed to be kept. While their journey begins in the 20th Century, as they travel they seemingly develop the ability to move through time and space as they pass through a variety of historical scenes taken from a broad range of theological texts and all involving heresy in one form or another. As they walk the long road to Santiago de Compostela they encounter Jesus who decides not to shave his beard to keep his mother happy; a young boy with stigmata and unusual powers; the Marquis de Sade who patiently struggles to teach atheism to a young girl he's captured; an eccentric priest who has an irreversible belief in transubstantiation until he changes his mind; two men who put their debate over Catholic dogma to the test in a duel with swords; and Satan who shows up just in time for a car wreck.

This is a diabolically entertaining look at the mysteries of fanaticism. The Milky Way remains a hotly debated work from cinema's greatest skeptic. While Luis Bunuel never made a secret of his skepticism about the existence of God, he was also raised as a strict Spanish Catholic and remained fascinated with the church's teaching throughout his life. Apparently, each of the film's historic episodes was adapted faithfully from an actual biblical text or historical account.

Good Bye, Lenin!

2002 Director Wolfgang Becker

Set in Berlin where West confronts East, this is a coming-of-age adventure that blends the fall of Communism with the salient emotions of a family's love.

In 1989, Christiane Kerner has lost her husband and is completely devoted to the Socialist East German state.  A heart attack leaves her in a coma, and when she awakens eight months later, the Berlin Wall has fallen and it's a whole new world.  Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal upon his mother's awakening, her son strives to keep the fall of the GDR a secret for as long as possible. Keeping their apartment firmly rooted in the past, his scheme works for a while, but it's not long before his mother is feeling better and ready to get up and around again.

This is a charming feel-good film that touches gently on the subject of hard held beliefs in the context of a changed world. Well acted by Daniel Brühl who plays the son in a constant state of near panic

Cinema Paradiso

1988 Director Giuseppe Tornatore

This is Giuseppe Tornatore's motion picture masterpiece. For those who have never seen it, this extraordinary celebration of youth, friendship and the everlasting magic of films is sure to captivate your heart and send your spirit soaring.

Based on the life and times of the director himself, Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village cinema. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent film director. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day the boy saves the projectionist's life during a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist himself. A few years later he falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later he has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can.

This is film making at its very best. It is a totally absorbing watch and not a dry eye will be seen anywhere. A lovely stroll down memory lane to a calmer less rushed world where people mattered and good things happened. The DVD release incorporates an additional 51 minutes of material that was edited from the release version. It broadens the experience considerably and adds a great deal more depth to the characters.

Slow Motion

1980 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This film whose French title is "Sauve Qui Peut (la Vie)" is pessimistic but visually stunning and marks Jean-Luc Godard's return to cinema after having spent the 70s working in video. It is an examination of sexual relationships, in which three protagonists interact in different combinations.

The film presents a few days in the lives of three people: Paul, a television producer; Denise, his co-worker and ex-girlfriend; and Isabelle, a prostitute whom Paul has used. Denise wants to break up with Paul and move to the country. Isabelle wants to work for herself instead of her pimp. Paul just wants to survive. Their stories intersect when Paul brings Denise to the country cottage he is trying to rent and Isabelle comes to see it without knowing that the landlord has been her client. The film is broken into segments entitled "The Imaginary," "Commerce," "Life," and "Music." Each of the first three sections focuses on one character and the last section brings all three characters together.

This complex film is often closer to an essay than a story; it uses slow motion and experimental techniques to explore questions of love, work, and the nature of cinema. Sauve Qui Peut (la Vie) was Godard's first film with his frequent collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville, who edited and co-wrote the film.

Fata Morgana

1971 Director Werner Herzog

The film's title, Fata Morgana, refers to mirages or optical illusions brought on by heat, and is an apt title for this storyless, hallucinatory work shot in the deserts of North Africa. It is a rhythmic, musical succession of images and short scenes.

One of the images is a pianist and drummer who play tiredly, surrounded by endless tracts of desert. This is an image that has been adapted and re-used in countless music videos and is a small piece of evidence suggesting that this is a very influential film. The narration, in English, comes from a Guatemalan creation myth, and the accompanying music ranges from Couperin to Cash, with significant contributions by Leonard Cohen.

Fata Morgana is one of Herzog's early features. His crew encountered many problems during the filming, most notably being imprisoned because cameraman Schmidt-Reitwein's name was similar to the name of a German mercenary who was hiding from the authorities and had recently been sentenced to death in absentia.

The Motorcycle Diaries

2004 Director Walter Salles

Based on the journals of the same name this is Walter  Salles' dramatization of a motorcycle road trip that the young Ernesto 'Che' Guevara went on in his youth that would show him his life's calling.

The Motorcycle Diaries stars Gael García Bernal as a young, pre-revolution Guevara. As a 23-year-old medical student in 1952 traveling across South America on a motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granado, played by  Rodrigo de la Serna, who co-wrote the source material. As they embark on their journey, both young men come of age and find their individual world views broadened farther than they ever expected. It is during this journey and his stay as a helper at a leper colony that Guevara realises that the South Americans are all one people controlled by dividing states. This was to be the turning point in this revolutionaries life.

Well directed and steadily paced this is quite a remarkable film. Some directorial licence has been made with regard to historical accuracy but it does not detract in the least. A very well made film.

Pan's Labyrinth

2006 Director Guillermo del Toro

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to fantasy cinema that defined such early works as Cronos with this haunting drama set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

It concerns the strange journeys of an imaginative young girl who may be the mythical princess of an underground kingdom. Her mother recently married a sadistic army captain and is soon to bear the cruel military man's child. The young girl is forced to entertain herself as her recently-formed family settles into their new home nestled deep in the Spanish countryside. As her bed-ridden mother lies immobilized in anticipation of her forthcoming child and her high-ranking stepfather remains determined to fulfill the orders of General  Franco to crush a nearby guerrilla uprising, the young girl soon ventures into an elaborate stone labyrinth presided over by the mythical faun Pan. Convinced by Pan that she is the lost princess of legend and that in order to return to her underground home she must complete a trio of life-threatening tasks, she sets out to reclaim her kingdom.

Beautifully shot and acted this film is a huge improvement on del Torro's earlier works. Although the plot is classical the delivery is done with impressive imagination and flair. Well worth watching although some of the scenes are definitely not for the young, notably the scene where the Captain beats a soldier to death with a bottle and the whole sequence with the eyeless monster.

Che: Part Two

2008 Director Steven Soderbergh

This is part two of Soderbergh's Che Guevara Saga. Part one ended with the taking of Havana. This film deals with the fated Bolivian Campaign.

In 1967 Guevara resurfaces in Bolivia to organize a modest group of Cuban comrades and Bolivian recruits in preparation for the Latin American Revolution. But while the Bolivian campaign would ultimately fail, the tenacity, sacrifice, and idealism displayed by Guevara during this period would make him a symbol of heroism to followers around the world.

Benicio Del Toro keeps up the mesmerising performance that he started in part one. It is a pity that Guevara's African campaigns go unmentioned as much of what happened in the intervening years had bearing on the outcome of this campaign. Partly because one knows how this will end and partly due to the non-changing surroundings, this film lacks the pace and energy of its predecessor. However, as a concluding glimpse at this iconic figure it is well worth the watch. Though Parts 1 and 2 were screened together at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, they were set to be released separately.

Play Time

1967 Director Jacques Tati

Tati directed this film nearly a decade after Mon Oncle. Playtime continues the adventures of M. Hulot in a starker and more indifferent social setting.

The colourful Paris of Mon Oncle, last seen being slowly chipped away by progress, has now vanished almost entirely. Playtime takes as its setting an ultra-modern Paris where familiar landmarks appear only as fleeting reflections in the new buildings of glass and steel. Alternating between Hulot and a group of American tourists, Tati exploits the chaos just below the overly ordered surface of this brave new world. Again moving from one nearly wordless episode to another, Tati sends his alter ego off to make an appointment in a whirring, featureless office complex. He subsequently moves on to an exhibition of new inventions, meets an old friend at an aquarium-like apartment, and wreaks havoc in a snooty new restaurant.

Although ambitious and technically complex this is not the most polished of the Hulot films. It proved unpopular and unprofitable and helped usher in the financial difficulties that would plague Tati late in life before finally getting the recognition it enjoys today. Tati was generally dissatisfied with this film as can be seen in the small extras where he casts the script into the collapsing rubble of the set as it is demolished.

Herz aus Glas

1976 Director Werner Herzog

This is Herzog's treatise on the power and importance of art.

It is the story of an 18th-century Bavarian glassblower who by virtue of his delicate work casts a spell over his neighbours. He is the principle employer in the town and his wares are the stuff of legend. So when he dies without revealing the secret to the famous "Ruby Glass", the townsfolk will do literally anything to find the answer.

Herzog was known to put his actors through the wringer to get the results he wanted. In this film he decided that the best way to get his people to dance to the crack of his whip was to actually put them under hypnosis. The dazed, zombie-like performances certainly fit the subject matter.  The word usually used to describe Heart of Glass is "haunting". Some viewers have gone beyond haunted and into "possessed." Watch carefully and spot director Herzog in a bit as a glass carrier.

La Cage Aux Folles II

1980 Director Edouard Molinaro

Renato and Albin, the internationally popular gay couple from La Cage Aux Folles, return in this sequel directed by Edouard Molinaro.

In a move to make his partner jealous, the flamboyant Albin waits in a local café, in full drag, hoping to be picked up.  But Alvin gets more than he bargains for when the fly he catches in his web is actually a spy who uses him as an unwitting courier for a secret microfilm. Now on the run from ruthless agents, Albin and Renato flee to Italy where they attempt to hide out on a family farm, with Alvin posing as Renato's wife. Once there, Albin becomes an object of lust for a group of lonely farmhands.

Unlike most sequels, this film not only keeps the format of the first but also allows the characters room to expand and show new facets of themselves. The plot is farcical but the delivery is deadpan and the result is very funny. Albin's confusion at having to be a man dressed up as a woman pretending to be a man is hilarious. A very good sequel to a ground breaking film.

Summer Things

2002 Director Michel Blanc

Based on the novel by Joseph Connolly, this is a masterful example of ensemble comedy with an acidic tone that offers unexpected dividends for lovers of French farce. A surprise pairing of Jacques Dutronc and Charlotte Rampling makes this quite a delight.

Leaving her husband Bertrand Lannier in Paris, bourgeois housewife Elizabeth journeys to Le Toquet for the summer holidays. There she is joined by young single mother Julie, hard-up neighbours Veró and Jérôme and their gangly teenage son Loïc. Too poor to stay in the same fancy hotel as Elizabeth, Jérôme has booked his family into a rundown caravan site, much to the chagrin of his status-conscious wife. Meanwhile, Loïc is eager to lose his virginity, Elizabeth is wondering whether she trusts the adulterous Bertrand, Julie is chasing after anything with a pulse and, on the other side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth's nymphomaniac daughter Emilie  is partying with Kevin in Chicago, little realizing that he has embezzled money from her father's firm to pay for the trip.

With an acidic tetchiness, Blanc challenges us to find anything to like about its morally ugly but physically attractive characters. The tone of this scabrous comedy is unerringly caustic. After exploiting these holidaymakers' foibles for comic effect, he throws them into tragedy, before skilfully weaving the disparate narrative threads together for a finale that's as hesitant as it is satisfying.

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow

2004 Director Theo Angelopoulos

With The Weeping Meadow, one of filmmaking's greatest remaining masters embarks on his crowning achievement: a projected trilogy whose goal is nothing less than "a poetic summing up of the century that just ended."

This first film, spanning 1919-1949, begins with refugees from Odessa settling on a piece of land that was promised to them on Greece's misty northern plains. In a transgression of mythic proportions, the foundling Eleni falls in love with her adoptive brother Alexis and, after marrying his widowed father, flees with her lover to the nearby port of Thessaloniki. As the unrest of the 1930s pits fascism against leftism, Alexis, a talented musician, departs for America and leaves Eleni behind to bear the brunt of Greek history: war, political repression, civil war.

The ambition of Angelopoulos's concept is matched by the grandeur of his style, which takes his majestically fluid camerawork to new heights of virtuosity and produces a steady stream of stunning images. More boldly than ever, Angelopoulos juggles foreground and background, personal and political, story and history into a vision that is simultaneously tragic and epic, capped by a powerful allegorical vision of a "weeping meadow" that feeds the river of history with the tears of individual griefs.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

2008 Director Uli Edel

This is Uli Edel's brave exploration of an often forgotten part of German history, the rise and fall of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing terrorist organization that became increasingly active in the 60's and 70's.

Also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, after its founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the Red Army Faction was formed by the radicalized children of the Nazi generation. Their aim is to create a more human society but by employing inhuman means they not only spread terror and bloodshed, they also lost their own humanity. The man who understands them is also their hunter: the head of the German police force Horst Herold. And while he succeeds in his relentless pursuit of the young terrorists, he knows he's only dealing with the tip of the iceberg

The film is adapted from author Stefan Aust's definitive account of this revolutionary group. The action is interspersed with media footage and is gritty and fast paced. Moritz Bleitreu plays Andreas superbly. Many of the original locations were used in this film including the court where their final destiny was to play out. If you want to feel the winds of change that swept through Europe in the late 1960's and 1970's then this is a must-see film.

Last Year in Marienbad

1961 Director Alain Resnais

A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the film is a riddle of seduction darting between a present and past which may not even exist.

At a social gathering at a château, a man approaches a woman and claims they met the year before at Marienbad. He is convinced that she is waiting here for him. The woman insists they have never met. Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorientating shifts in time and location, the film explores the relationships among the characters. Conversations and events are repeated in several places in the château and grounds seen not only from diffenent perspectives but also different time frames.

Hypnotically dreamlike, Last Year at Marienbad is a surrealist parody of Hollywood melodrama, a high-fashion romance with a dark, alien underbelly. Among the notable images in the film is a scene in which two characters (and the camera) rush out of the château and are faced with a tableau of figures arranged in a geometric garden; although the people cast long dramatic shadows, the trees in the garden do not.

The Man From London

2007 Director Béla Tarr

This is a dark philosophical drama by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Although similar in style to his previous films this one explores new directions.

A  switchman at a sea port, witnesses a murder from his watch tower. He had reached a point in life where he was content to embrace loneliness while turning a blind eye to the inevitable decay that surrounds him. Upon bearing witness the murder, however, the he is forced to wrestle with such profound issues as punishment, mortality, and the sin of complicity in a crime he didn't even commit.

As with Tarr's other films the long held shots, slow tracking, long observant vistas unfold gracefully before the eye. The environment is claustrophobic and the mood sombre and menacing. Curiously, though, the film was made in Hungarian and then dubbed into an odd mixture of French and English. Quite why an English Police Inspector would be investigating a murder on French soil is not explained. This dual language aspect gives the film a surreal quality that is a departure from his previous starkly realistic films. Well worth watching, especially the very long sequence involving the murder itself, where the camera swings slowly from one side of the docked vessel to the other like a pendulum clock as events unfold on both sides of the vessel unaware of each other.

Che: Part One

2008 Director Steven Soderbergh

This is Soderbergh's epic account of the legendary Argentine revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. Filmed in two parts this portion deals with the Cuban episode.

The first part opens with Che meeting Fidel in Mexico City in 1955 and joining the small invasion party that established a base in the Sierra Maestra in Cuba. It ends in January 1959 when the 30-year-old Che, cautioning against triumphalism and forbidding his men to indulge in looting, heads towards Havana to begin what he considers the really important part of the revolution, creating a new kind of society.

It's an intelligent, fast-moving, well-researched film, based in part on Che's posthumously published Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, offering both a convincing account of the bitter, hard-fought struggle and a portrait of a great and complex revolutionary. He was first valued for his medical skills, but soon became such an essential adviser that Fidel tried to keep him out of harm's way. Benicio Del Toro gives a masterful performance of Che establishing him as an actor of considerable skills.

Rififi

1955 Director Jules Dassin

Following his expulsion from America during the years of the Unamerican Activities hearings Dassin directed this landmark film about a jewellery heist and the consequences of unfettered greed.

A quartet of thieves band together to commit a seemingly impossible robbery of an English jewelry shop in the Rue de Rivoli. Dassin takes one of the parts as a safe cracker under the pseudonym of Perlo Vita. The heist is meticulously planned and successfully executed but things start to go wrong when a rival gang wants to take a percentage and kidnap the gang leader's son as leverage.

The set piece of the film is an intricate 28 minute sequence that depicts the robbery in detail all filmed in absolute silence without dialogue or music. The tension that Dassin injects into this sequence is so enthralling that it draws the viewer to the very edge of their seat. Although the misogynistic scenes at the beginning of the film would not be considered "according to Hoyle" in today's times they do not detract from the mastery of this often overlooked gem.

La Cage Aux Folles

1978 Director Edouard Molinaro

Oddly, this was one of the most successful foreign films ever shown in the U.S. A comedy based on a French stage play, La Cage aux Folles depicts the farcical chaos that results when a gay man attempts to play it straight.

Young Laurent returns to St. Tropez bearing the news that he has found the girl of his dreams and they are engaged.  What's more, she and her family are on their way over for dinner at his father's home to meet the in-laws-to-be.  This traditional meeting of families seems typical, but because this ultraconservative family will be expecting to meet Father and wife, they'll never be prepared for the shock of meeting Renato and his flamboyant, campy, outrageous lover and drag-queen, Albin.  So in a great effort to please his son, Renato asks Albin for the performance of a lifetime. Thus setting up an unforgettable evening that is charged and ready to detonate an explosion of zaniness and absurdity.

La Cage aux Folles' pleasant, nonthreatening comic sensibility attracted a large mainstream audience in both Europe and the United States, which was at the time unusual for a film with a homosexual theme. Indeed, the film was popular enough to inspire two remakes: a stage musical and, nearly two decades later, the hilarious Hollywood comedy The Birdcage with Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, and Gene Hackman.

Dante 01

2008 Director Marc Caro

Co-director of Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, this is Caro's solo directorial debut. It is a nightmarish tale of a deep space prison and the newly arrived inmate suffering from a mysterious alien infection.

Dante 01 is a maximum-security prison located out of harm's way at the edge of the galaxy. Upon arrival for psychiatric evaluation, the sole survivor of a horrifying alien encounter finds himself in the middle of a battle to harness his strange new powers. But the volatile force that now dwells within him is greater than anyone realizes.

This is not a remake or variation of Alien but a vision of universal hope versus human cynicism. The dark style that is Caro's trademark pervades this film and makes the outcome even more surprising. This film is a brave allegory about our nature, our beginnings and our destiny. The cast include a few familiar faces from both his previous films with Jean-Pierre Jeunet and there is enough originality here to give pause for thought.

The City Of Lost Children

1995 Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

Caro & Jeunet team up again to produce a fantastically-twisted fairy tale chock-full of curious characters, spectacular stunts and unforgettable visuals.

A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they will slow his aging process. A gutsy little girl and a sentimental strongman join hearts and hands to save a small boy's dreams from a madman's master plan. They encounter a barrage of weird and wonderful characters on their way, many of whom will be familiar returns from Amelie and Delicatessen.

Reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's harrowing Brazil this film is filled with dazzling visuals, ingenious gadgets and state-of-the-art special effects. It is a journey into the darkest recesses of the human psyche conjuring up nightmarish images and juxtapositioning them next to kindness and compassion. A great mix and quite a ride that will delight and disturb in equal measures

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2009 Director Niels Arden Oplev

Based on the late author Stieg Larsson's successful trilogy of books, this is a dark journey into the skeletal closet of the wealthy and powerful.

A journalist is hired to uncover the truth about the disappearance of a wealthy Swedish industry baron's niece forty years ago. He pairs up with a dysfunctional maverick computer hacker and together they embark on a disturbing journey into the darkest recesses of a family's history. The deeper they dig for the truth, however, the greater the risk of being buried alive by members of the family who will go to great lengths to keep their secrets tightly sealed.

This film grabs you by the lapels and keeps your attention riveted throughout. It is masterfully constructed and Noomi Rapace gives a captivating performance that is Oscar worthy. The film is gritty, haunting and fast paced with some violent scenes that are uncomfortably real. This is definitely not one for children to see. Although much depends on the hacker's abilities the film does not get bogged down with technology but concentrates more on the human element. There are a good many references, intentional or not, to  Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow up. This is a cracker of a start to a trilogy and I hope the sequels can keep up not only the pace but also the superb acting and excellent cinematography.

The Mirror

1974 Director Andrei Tarkovsky

As the son of a famous Russian poet, this is a stream of consciousness overlayed by his father's poetry.

This non-linear autobiographical film is Tarkovsky's most personal meditation on time, history and the Russian countryside. Through a series of episodes and images, he captures the mood and the feeling of the period just before, during and after the war. Lyrical reminiscences of his mother and of his father's poetry figure large in the film, along with extraordinary images of nature.

Combining black-and-white and color work, with some unusual documentary footage, this highly regarded movie is structured with the logic of a dream. It's a wonderful, slow amble through someones innermost fond memories.

Roma

1972 Director Federico Fellini

This is Fellini's autobiographical tribute to Rome. Narrated by Fellini himself it features a stream of consciousness made up of a mixture of real-life footage and fictional set pieces.

It flows from one episode to another, beginning with his early years in Rome in the 1930's during the time of Mussolini. At the age of 18, he moves in to a tenement building and explores the wild characters living in neighborhood. The events that follow switch between the past and contemporary times, including a story line that involves a 1970's film crew making a movie about Rome. He also incorporates segments of Roman history and problems in the government, including an improvised speech from Gore Vidal. Throughout this journey there are visits to an outdoor restaurant, a movie theater, a music hall, and a brothel. In one famously surreal segment, groups of clergymen gather together for a Catholic fashion show spectacle. After a visit to a street festival and some on-camera interviews, the film concludes with a long night sequence of a large group of motorcycles driving around some of the major landmarks of Rome.

This is a "sit back and let it roll over you" type of film. It is quite enjoyable providing you're not expecting a plot nor much cohesion between the various episodes.

Wasabi

2001 Director Gérard Krawczyk

I was a little surprised to find Jean Reno playing the lead in this slapstick rom-com that masquerades as a crime thriller.

Jean Reno plays a detective in the French police force. His methods are "hit first, then hit again then hit some more, then arrest those left standing". Quite predictably he is suspended from work and as he wonders what to do for the next 60 days, he learns that an old flame in Tokyo has died naming him as the sole beneficiary in her will. Once in Japan, he meets his daughter, who doesn't think much of him and appears to be unaware that he is her biological father. As he tries to bond with her, he examines the facts behind her mother's death and begins to suspect that it was no accident.

To be honest the best part is the Wasabi scene from which the film takes its name. It is genuinely funny if somewhat predictable. But then the whole film is predictable throughout. It's a shame because Reno is an iconic actor with some major films under his belt. Anyway the kids will like it because of the cartoonesque, over the top, harmless violence.

Delicatessen

1991 Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

This is a unique and surreal dark comedy that has rightly received overwhelming critical acclaim.

In a post-apocalyptic society where meat is scarce, cannibalism is no longer unsavory. And when a young ex-clown takes a job in a dilapidated deli, he's completely unaware that the butcher plans to serve him to the building's bizarre tenants. But when the butcher’s nearsighted daughter falls for the clown, she'll go to absurd lengths to foil her father's plan.

This dark tale is played out in a brilliantly designed, gloriously surreal world reminiscent of the works of Terry Gilliam. Like Gilliam, Jeunet comes from an animation background, and has a fondness for extravagant visuals, absurd twists, and a sense of humor that combines sharp satire with broad slapstick and gross-out imagery. This mixture may displease the weak of stomach, but those attuned to the film's sensibility will be delighted by the obvious technical virtuosity and wicked sense of humor.

Breathless

1960 Director Jean-Luc Godard

This is Jean-Luc Godard debut feature film and one that would grab cinema by the scruff of the neck.

One of the seminal films of the French New Wave, this is a story of the love between a small-time hood wanted for killing a policeman, and an American girl who sells the Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as he hides out from a dragnet.

Godard developed his now famous techniques: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition he uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio.

When Breathless was first released, audiences and critics responded to the burst of energy it gave the French cinema; it won numerous international awards and became an unexpected box-office sensation. It is as fresh today as it was then and a joy to watch.

Werckmeister Harmonies

2000 Director Bela Tarr

This is Bela Tarr's follow up to his seven-hour epic Satantango. This elegant, haunting work is about the cycles of violence that have dogged Eastern European history.This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain, which is surrounded by nothing but frost.

Jancos is a wide-eyed innocent who works as an occasional postal worker and as a caretaker. He marvels at the miracles of creation, from the planets rotating in the heavens to the animals on earth. One fatal day, a circus featuring jars full of medical anomalies and a massive dead whale entombed in a corrugated metal trailer visits this depressed town. Another more sinister attraction is a shadowy figure dubbed "The Prince," whose nihilist rants incite the town's disaffected to riot. Tension in the town builds until, after one of The Prince's hate-filled speeches, throngs of angry men with blunt instruments ransack and brutalize a men's hospital ward. When the dust clears, lives are irrevocably changed.

Bela Tarr employs all of his groundbreaking techniques that made Satantango so unique. Long tracking shots, long holds on scene after the action has ceased. The only criticism I have is that the violence in the hospital scene is not convincing without the commensurate sound that would have been there in real life. A mob of enraged men is loud and vocal. I admit that the silent angry march was eerie and menacing but silent violence isn't. It's just odd. The way the tables are turned on poor Jancos is unexpected but it's a beautifully cynical twist to the end of a captivating film.

Bande à part

1964 Director Jean-Luc Godard

Based on Dolores Hitchens' novel Fool's Gold this is one of Jean-Luc Godard's most pioneering films. Many of the techniques perfected here went on to become the defacto way of doing things. This is a set piece in any serious cinema student's curriculum.

It tells the tale of three disaffected youths who plan a burglary with deadly results. The alienated young trio is marvelous, particularly Anna Karina, and the early scenes of their clearly overdeveloped fantasy lives are splendidly handled. Of note are the race through Le Louvres and the now famous Cafe dance routine.

Something of a companion piece to Godard's classic À Bout de Souffle, its young characters have the same odd mixture of fatalism and starry-eyed naivety that is, by turns, appealing and tragic. Trivia buffs should note that the film gave its name to Quentin Tarantino's production company (A Band Apart), and several of its scenes are echoed in his Pulp Fiction.

L'Homme du Train

2002 Director Patrice Leconte

Leconte gets the very best from Hallyday in this unusual tale of friendship, respect and alternative circumstances.

A bank robber and a retired literature teacher are thrown together by circumstances. As they start to listen to each other, both yearn for the life of the other in preference to their own. Each is driven forward by their own relentless circumstances unable to escape the fate that awaits them.

It is a touching study in the art of introspection, which is notoriously hard to do well on screen. Leconte succeeds superbly. This underrated film yields Hallyday's best performance. The film is darkly humorous and beautifully shot.

The Banishment

2007 Director Andrei Zvyagintsev

This is Zvyagintsev's follow up to The Return. It is the tale of two brothers struggling to keep their lives together in the face of certain disaster.

Alex and his family move from the city to his father's old house in the countryside. As the family settles into their rustic existence, Alex's wife reveals that she is pregnant by another man. Enraged by his wife's announcement, Alex consults with his brother and demands that she terminates the pregnancy. When the forced abortion goes horribly awry and Alex's brother suffers a severe heart attack, a confrontation with the man Alex believes to have seduced his wife send events quickly spiraling out of control.

A tale of high morals and pride set against stunning scenery, all beautifully filmed. The transition from idyll to nightmare is so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. It is a harrowing story that highlights the critical points in one's life where devastation can so easily follow ill informed decisions. Well worth seeing.